Music Hype: Kid Astray Interview

by Tyler

May 1, 2018

Kid Astray is your next need-to-know band dropping fire through your headphones. Their self-described music is “tangy pop with heavy nods towards indie and rock.” They have been steadily releasing killer tracks since 2013, continually whittling away fluff from their songs and replacing it with increasingly addictive melodies. For comparison sake, they say to think Foster The People, a direct and early influence of the band members.

Hear more from Kid Astray about what drives their music and what apps keep them creative.

The Digital Hype: How do you think your music has changed from your first album in ~2013 to this new EP in 2018?

Kid Astray: It’s interesting that you’re asking just that, as one of the main reasons this EP is quite different from ‘Home Before The Dark’ is because our focus and goals were quite different.

Back then we really focused on making it as catchy and fluent as possible, and we worked with a lot of different songwriters and a producer to try and force our sound to progress fast. It was a great experience that we learned a lot from, so it’s not something we regret in any way, but with this EP we’ve sort of done the opposite. Gone back to just writing something that we think is cool, doing everything from production to the artwork ourselves.

TDH: What songs are you seeing people responding to the most so far?

KA: The singles from our debut album have the best streaming numbers, “Back To The Ordinary” in particular. That’s kinda cool, because it was the one track on the album we spent the most time on, and we initially had some serious doubts about it. Right now we’re very excited to see how people like the new tracks.

They’re five pretty different tracks, showcasing different aspects of Kid Astray.

TDH: Are there any political or social issues that have influenced your music?

KA: It’s sort of inevitable to be influenced by politics and social stuff, obviously. We have never actually written an intended political song, and have sort of steered consciously away from that area, as it doesn’t really align with our wishes and visions. But we do voice our opinions other places.

TDH: As musicians in the digital age, are there any apps you would consider indispensable to your creation process or performances?

KA: Uuuh, cool question!

Shazam and Soundhound, definitely. Inspiration can come everywhere, and it really helps to be able to find out what that awesome tune is anywhere anytime.

Apple’s own recording app is a must for recording melodies and early demos, and a great tool for songwriting. An idea for a song might present itself at any time, so it is really important to record it before it’s gone, even though it might be a bit awkward to be singing into your phone on a bus or a train. Apple´s note app for writing down lyrics and everything.

TDH: What social network/platform has been the most beneficial so far and you see being important into the future?

Facebook and Instagram are the boring but truthful answer. They’re both getting increasingly difficult to work with, with posts having little to no impact unless you know the mysterious algorithms or throw some money on it.

I think now Spotify is gradually turning into the single most important arena for promoting music, occupying a lot of the space that social media, and even music press used to occupy. At least in Scandinavia.

If you’re really good with videos, YouTube is really cool and great hub for bands, so we hope to do a lot more there in the future. But it’s really hard to tell, since these things change really fast.